[R-pkg-devel] Procedure for the transfer or an R package maintainership
On 11/10/2020 10:20 a.m., Al T wrote:
Dear R-devel-community! The current maintainer of the 'nephro' R-package (https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/nephro/index.html), Cristian Pattaro, asked me if I'm willing to take over this work. I'm very interested in stepping in but since I've never done something similar before I'd like to ask for some advice. I read on stackoverflow (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39223320/transferring-maintainership-of-an-r-package-on-cran) that the standard procedure is (in the following order): * a message from the old maintainers' email address stating the change in maintainership * a change in the DESCRIPTION file with the address of the new maintainer information. But I'm interested in the steps afterwards (see also https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64299121/what-do-i-have-to-do-if-im-taking-over-the-maintenance-of-a-gnu-r-package-publi): * How can I 'link' this package to a new repository on the version control platform of my choice (e.g. https://gitlab.com/ or https://github.com)?
Just change any documentation in the package that points to the wrong place. In particular, this will include the URL: field in the DESCRIPTION file, but it may show up in help pages or vignettes as well.
* How do the package update procedures on CRAN work (e.g. if I want to create a new version of the package)?
That's described quite clearly here: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html And you *must* create a new version of the package for the maintainer change to take effect. Depending on how many other changes you are planning for it, you could make the minimal changes now, and bigger ones a month or two later, or wait until everything is ready.
* How does the update procedure for the repository on r-forge (in my case: https://r-forge.r-project.org/projects/nephro/) work? Is this identical to the CRAN-package?
r-forge uses Subversion, so to update the package there, just change your working copy and commit the changes. You'll need to be registered as a project member with sufficient privileges to do this; that registration needs to be done by someone with admin permissions.
I looked into https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html as well https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-exts.html but I couldn't find an answer to my questions.
Hopefully I've added enough info for you. Duncan Murdoch